Diplomacy with minor factions & pirates/bounty hunters



The diplomacy tools should be useable to interact with other factions which are not interested in galactic domination a.k.a. minor factions, as well as pireates/bounty hunters.



Not all kinds of deals would be available, but some should be accessible. IMO if the game guts are reused and minor factions & pirates are 'just another faction', albeit with different goal parameters and different 'victory goals', it could be interesting to make stuff more consistent, predictable & reusable.



Pirates/bounty hunters could have no 'victory condition' but be interested in having a power level equal to the military leader for instance. It would be more interesting than just having it be a byproduct/magical spawn from a Quest.



Pirates would generally be an annoyance, but we could broker a truce where they won't attack us, and in exchange we pay them 'protection money'. (aka racketeering, but still...)



Pirates would periodically Launch a bounty mission: pirates get bloodthirsty and basically want to attack someone. Players go on a bidding war to pit them against a specific opponent. THe highest bidder wins. The pirates take everyone's money, not just the winner! Arrr!

I like new ideas from Amplitude, as always. Diplomacy has been always one of the weakest points in 4X an there seems to be something new. Said that, I have some concerns:

This sounds pretty great. I especially like wars working with war exhaustion and such and the way treaties attached to it will work. Though I am kinda confused about diplomatic pressure. The way it is described it sounds like you'll be able to force other empires to give you stuff or war. Now maybe I misunderstood it, but wouldn't it make much more sense if you were just able to force trade deals that while fair in themselves, favor the pressuring empire, like having it trade dust for strategic or luxury resources the other empire usually wouldn't give away for example because it needs them for a monopoly/abundance

- Sinnaj63 has explained it etter tha I can. Specially consider the sentence: "but wouldn't it make much more sense if you were just able to force trade deals that while fair in themselves, favor the pressuring empire". IMO that should be the key: not force random rewards from others, but deals like Sinnaj63 suggested.



- Also read KnightOf Phoenix first comment. I support most of what he said.



- About all discussion about limiting expansion, I have one question: from what I read in Population GDD, can you make having lots of pop from other empires being a burden to your faction gameplay (via senate, ideologies, etc...) that stops excessive expansion? I understand that it won't apply to all factions, as i.e. Cravers will simply eat them.



- Can you make war exaustion just refered to previous sentence: having lots of pop from other factions increases the ineficiency of you empire drastically (through Approval or any other means) until you have assimilated them one way or another (may be they simply get used to your empire with time, or are genetically modified to look more like Horatio himself)?

This will make sense because this pop are willing to be on strike or uprising until you have a way to deal with them.





Eager to see what you can do.

Looking good! I have a lot of confidence that Amplitude will end up with something fun.



I'm basically happy as long as I never again see the situation that seems to happen in almost EVERY 4X game ever:

Where the AI starts a war they have absolutely no chance to win, where they throw wave after wave of completely ineffective units at you and lose their whole army. Yet still demand completely unreasonable terms to make peace (e.g. everything you have)

So either you have to slog through pointless battles that slow the game to a crawl, or turn every game into a conquest slog, that slows the game to a crawl.

/rant

There are a lot of things in this GDD, and I like them all.



However, I still have some questions :

- Will player doing a coop game have stronger bonuses if they play the same faction?

- If 2 players can play together, will it be possible to team up the AI to make sure they are not too weak?

- How about 2 players at the head of one empire?



I also have a lot of concerns about the lack of Shadow Diplomacy.

Why couldn't we made secret non-agression pact, mutual defense treaties...

And the fact that you apparently can't create disorders inside an empire using the diplomacy. Like an option to, as a Sophon, "Promise to come deliver the brothers incorporated in a Craver empire", which would create some disorders in the Craver empire.

I also would like to see a Galactic Congress, which could, as in Civ 5 for instance, ban the use and the gathering of certain types of luxury resources, ban an other member... and bring advantages to the empire controling it. Like a bonus in influence production if you are the president of the Galactic Coucil of Security. Such a Council could, too, enact a market ban... Just saying.



I also fear going at war could be not worth it. Then why shoud I spend hours to design my ships, if I'm not allowed to lead a war to an end?

The Reputation System

This sounds like a good way to handle the repercussions of diplomatic actions, especially since we can probably check our badges at any time and could also see the badges of other players.

Just please don't give us a badge that makes future deals harder to strike just because we didn't give in to tribute demands or begging. For that matter, a "charitable" badge that makes other empires more likely to trade with you if you do help out a weaker empire might be a good idea.



Alliances

Being able to leave an alliance when its policies no longer line up with your own is important, but I'm glad to see that we can define an attitude beforehand to make our stance clear to other alliance members, be they player or AI.



War Exhaustion

While I'm generally in favor of a mechanic that regulates the length and scope of war, I don't think it should be impossible to wage a war of annihilation. With a system called "War Exhaustion" your own population's approval might factor into your ability to keep pushing for more even when you're winning, so that you could use improvements and influence to satisfy them.

Furthermore, I agree with the others that the losing side being able to force a truce feels strange. While a system of having to negotiate the support of other factions might be too involved for ES2 (and might in fact favor the winner due to bribes), some sort of explanation might go a long way in selling this idea. Perhaps the Academy threatens to withdraw its support?

The way the concessions the losing side has to make are decided could do with some clarification as well. I do think a "genocidal" war should be possible, especially for the cravers, if you manage your empire right.



Diplomatic Pressure

I have some concerns that this could lead to unbalanced or strange situations. How easy would it be for a large, powerful empire to bully smaller empires into giving them more and more? Could having to make concessions lead to a snowballing effect? What about a small empire with great influence production somehow managing to pressure a larger empire that could crush it into making concessions?

Using diplomatic pressure as a modifier to the balance scale of a deal might work better in some situations, perhaps combined with a "demand tribute" option to force the decision by the weaker empire.

In the end, all this depends on a delicate balance, and the exact mechanics of how a demand is determined.



Premade Teams

What is it they say on the internet? "Shut up and take my money."

This will be so good for playing with friends, or setting up interesting scenarios. One bug against the galaxy, winning one dinner... I mean, system at a time.

So I've been off for a few days and you guys have been very active!

Time for a round of responses!

Thank you all for the great feedback! This has given me a good sense of what you guys expect ^^

Tridus wrote:
How is the scaling of victory conditions in premade teams going to work? It seems like some of them won't scale that well (such as conquest types, as you're already killing everyone to get there), and thus is there a risk it might favor those ones over ones that do scale?



Also, would a shared tech tree increase science costs? Civ IV had that for team games, and it made for an interesting experience as compared to having individual tech trees and just trading everything you possibly can (which is extremely powerful in an alliance and feels cheesy). One thing that's really useful in that type of system is to be able to see what your ally is researching while on the research screen.



If a single alliance tech tree option was available, I'd use it when playing with my best friend. It does a lot to make it feel like a single team.

Scaling is primarily working with numbers yes. Things like conquest do not really scale unless you team up the opponents as well, but we could possibly consider tweaking the AI to be more likely to ally against pre-made teams. I do not think this is much of a concern at this point, but we do have some plans for the victory conditions that could mitigate this somewhat. About the risk of it being favored is similar to how conquest is usually favored in 2-empire games, so its not really something new ^^

The idea in general was just to allow sharing of research, not to add additional rules. However, that could be done quite easily through XML. Additional GUI assistance for this feature is likely going to be fairly low priority, considering that most players who will use this feature are already in direct contact, through steam chat, in-game chat or external VoIP. But depending on feedback it could get pushed up the improve list.

A single tech tree option breaks too much of the game architecture to implement, unfortunately.

Sinnaj63 wrote:
This sounds pretty great. I especially like wars working with war exhaustion and such and the way treaties attached to it will work. Though I am kinda confused about diplomatic pressure. The way it is described it sounds like you'll be able to force other empires to give you stuff or war. Now maybe I misunderstood it, but wouldn't it make much more sense if you were just able to force trade deals that while fair in themselves, favor the pressuring empire, like having it trade dust for strategic or luxury resources the other empire usually wouldn't give away for example because it needs them for a monopoly/abundance.

The problem with allowing an empire to choose the demands, means that it greatly imbalances the system and makes it frustrating to be on the receiving end. The point of having the system generate the resources and allowing the empire on the worse end of the deal choose what to give up, is a way to make the system feel reasonable. As other people are saying, there is a fear that the demand and war exhaust system could be frustrating -> these systems are there specifically to make it feel fair for both sides.

Troubladour wrote:
What about Diplomatic Victory?

Victory conditions are a seperate topic, though you can safely assume that the diplomatic victory will use some of the diplomacy features listed in here.

Void2258 wrote:
Something that needs to happen this time is that alliances need to be meaningful. In ES1, you could have an alliance and the AI could not only not be actively attacking the side you are both at war with, but could be sitting around not even building ships while the enemy marches over them. There is not much point to an alliance if you are forced to do all the fighting yourself.

This is a part of the war exhaust system as well. The goal is to make sure losses and gains are distributed according to contribution of war score to the battle.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
Ok.



Firstly, I do applaud Amplitude's desire to innovate when it comes to diplomacy, as it had been quite stagnant in 4x games.



However, I have major concerns with the proposed system, that I will explain point by point.



A. What does "winning a war" mean? How will that be defined, with regards to war exhaustion? Is the number of battles won a real indicator? What if your empire has 2 fleets while the enemy has 20. Sure, your empire might have won 5 battles, but there are still 15 fleets active and you only have 2. Will winning small battles against scouts or weak fleets going to matter, when the enemy's main and upgraded fleets are in a position to strike your undefended capital? How will the AI gauge all that?

The conquest of 3 undeveloped systems cannot be considered as equal to the conquest of the break basket or main production centre. Will the AI understand that?



The exhaustion bar will not be reflective of reality unless it takes into account a multitude of factors, such as relative strength and military power, the weight of each fleet to the empire in question, the production and economic strength of both, and the advancement of strategic goals. I highly doubt the AI will be able to make all those value judgements, which is normal, but it seems like you are giving the AI way too much responsibility that it can't uphold.



B. Diplomatic pressure essentially means you end up bullying others, based solely on influence production. I don't mind in theory, except the empire that abuses the system should get a badge that acknowledges it, and that makes the AI less likely to actively engage in a friendly way with you. Furthermore, it seems like the empire that is a victim of diplomatic pressure will have a choice of either picking between 3 options of concessions or declare war. Why can't it also try to negotiate its way out of it? To offer less or something else?



C. Related. Having it so that the pressuring empire has no input whatsoever on what they will get not only makes no sense, but will also lead to many frustrating scenarios. Let's take an EL example. Imagine being the Broken Lords, using diplomatic pressure on an empire, only for them to give you spices. How frustrating is that?

How is the AI supposed to understand what you would value more? How is it supposed to know that you value strategic resource A more than B, because the modules that you want are made up of A or because your faction quest needs A and not B?



Heck, what if the AI decides to give up systems, but you don't want to increase expansion disapproval. Will you be forced to accept worthless systems that will be harmful to you? It doesn't seem like the pressuring empire has any input in the whole thing except pressing the button. Doesn't that lead to the empire that is a victim of pressure having much more of a say than they should? That could be really abused by humans especially, where they will always pick the worthless concession if it's an option. And as far as the AI is concerned, it will never know what reward you actually prefer, because for some reason you can't make explicit and specific demands.



D. Being forced into a truce if you are winning. That is also frustratingly limiting. I can only accept that, if there is an overwhelming discrepancy in influence in favour of the losing side. Better yet, if it manages to make an appeal to other empires in the galaxy, and all of them support the cessation of hostilities, then I can see the winning side being forced into a truce.

A: Currently the idea is to use 'relative military power' as the primary values and small flat values for winning/losing battles and systems. The flat values are more to represent the morale lost, so losing a scout may not impact who is actually winning, but it does represent your empires dislike of losing 'stuff' in general. But the primary values will be based on how much of your military power you are losing.

I also think you are making it a lot of more complicated than it has to be. The system does not have to accurately represent who would win/lose if the battle existed without this system. The system is there to create static rules that players know and can play with. This is also a lot easier to make the AI function within this static rules, than in a system without any rules.



B: Diplomatic pressure is a type of bullying yes. And using demands will make empires upset with you, even sometimes when its not directly aimed at them. But the system incentivizes 'negociation' as you asked for -> as explained all normal deals will move Pressure back towards 0. The goal is that empires that generate less pressure will be looking for oppotunities to trade with the empires generating more to reset pressure. The initial design of the system was to have tangible reasons (i.e. resources) to trade with other empires. ^^



C: Obviously the design of the demands will have to make the person demanding feel like their getting something useful, but I think the opposite is even worse. Demanding is always gaining something (war included), even if you didn't get exactly what you wanted, it will still hurt the person in question. Optimally we will be able to design each choice such that it will always give you something you will want (say dust) as well as other things that add flavor.

The thing is, the system is not supposed to know how you 'value' things. Its a rigid system that is predictable and is resolved through predictable actions. Demanding a system should only occur on the last threshold of demands, meaning that you would have to intentionally not demand anything before to get to that point, nor did you make any deals with the empire at all.



D: We weight this by how frustrating it is that a single war means one empire is eliminated (or at least brought to the point of not being able to compete). You appear to not be considering the costs of the force truce or the severity of what is given up. It is meant to be a last resort, not a 'free pass'.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
What I propose is to have a negotiating screen, when an empire, winning or losing, is trying to force a truce. In that screen, we have a diplomatic bar that is determined by military size, economic power, influence, alliances...etc. The losing empire can only force a truce if it manages to push the bar greatly in its favour. In that screen, both empires will have the choice to speak with others empire to secure their support. The losing side will ask other empires to support the cessation of hostilities, while the winning empire appeals for them to laisser faire. If the losing side can secure the support of many or key empires, the bar will shift in their favour. If it reaches a certain point, it can force truce. Allies will, of course, automatically support each other in these negotiations.



In such a way, you make diplomacy a lot more dynamic, all inclusive, and "galactic", as opposed to purely bilateral. And it makes losing empires forcing truces a more difficult endeavour that they have to work hard to get. It also makes it unwise to ignore diplomatic relations with everyone on the map. If everyone hates you or is indifferent towards you, chances are you can't gain their support when you need it.



To summarize, the mechanics in and of themselves are not bad. They can work, if refined. The main problem is that it relies way too much on the AI making value judgements that it can't possible do well or intelligently, while removing a lot of agency from the player (even those that in theory have the upper hand).

This is interesting!

But it has a lot of issues of how you weight military power against economy or influence. How do you value an alliance? This sort of combining a bunch of values has a high chance of obfuscating the core rationale (end wars without elimination) and means that we're back to the same situation of the empire losing will lose economy/influence from losing systems and thus be eliminated in a single war.

Are you considering that the truce simply means that war has a highly increased cost on war declarations for 10 turns? That wars can be started again immediately, but at a high influence cost? Or even that ~10 turns of truce may not be as bad as you think?

sibir13 wrote:
If you do so, please make it optional. In CIV5 i really hate this option when you play in co-op. I would happy to have premade team with shared victory, but with some independent gameplay.



And i hope Cravers will have some unique diplomacy options based on power and fear.

It was listed in the 'we are looking into additional options' - yes that implied they can be toggled on/off !

Sinnaj63 wrote:
I do agree that there should be a way to negotiate out of demands though.



I also like the ideas of truces requiring foreign support, especially in multiplayer. In singleplayer I feel you shouldn't have to rely on the AI because it is the AI and it'll probably hate you for your score or something

Normal treaties are exactly negotiating out of demands ^^ The goal of the system is that empires are incentivized to trade normally.

The foreign support thing is very interesting, but it just means that the rationale is not met under certain circumstances. Say two players start in the same constellation and one rushes the other before he meets anyone else. The current system means that the attacked empire may have some chance to stay alive until he can seek help from others.

But having modifiers or treaties that function as 'foreign support' could be very interesting. Will certainly keep this in mind

Ashbery76 wrote:
Good to see War Exhaustion.I wish this could be included in the Legends DLC.It will be important that the A.I understands and uses this system at release.It took a year before the Legends A.I did.

This is unfortunately a too large system to implement into EL at this point. It also would change the base game flow quite a bit, which could be problematic for people who have enjoyed it as is.

pguyton wrote:
Learn from paradox they have ton a massive amount of work in the field of modeling complicated diplomacy in eu4 you can learn a ton from how they implemented their system and what worked and didn't work. Glad you're moving in that direction though can't wait to play this

Metalynx wrote:


A: Currently the idea is to use 'relative military power' as the primary values and small flat values for winning/losing battles and systems. The flat values are more to represent the morale lost, so losing a scout may not impact who is actually winning, but it does represent your empires dislike of losing 'stuff' in general. But the primary values will be based on how much of your military power you are losing.

I also think you are making it a lot of more complicated than it has to be. The system does not have to accurately represent who would win/lose if the battle existed without this system. The system is there to create static rules that players know and can play with. This is also a lot easier to make the AI function within this static rules, than in a system without any rules.

That is very reassuring, that relative military power has more weight than number of battles lost. The latter should of course still count, but it is the former that should matter more.

I hope a similar outlook will be there with regards to losing systems. Perhaps it can be as simple as the value of a system being determined by the number of population. The loss of a small system with 2 pop should not be as impactful to morale as the loss of a system with 15 pop.



I recognize of course that the system will be simplified by necessity. Heck, I prefer it that way and is one of my biggest draws to Endless games, that there is complexity in simplicity. I was simply illustrating that basing the military score only on winning battles would be too simplistic.

B: Diplomatic pressure is a type of bullying yes. And using demands will make empires upset with you, even sometimes when its not directly aimed at them. But the system incentivizes 'negociation' as you asked for -> as explained all normal deals will move Pressure back towards 0. The goal is that empires that generate less pressure will be looking for oppotunities to trade with the empires generating more to reset pressure. The initial design of the system was to have tangible reasons (i.e. resources) to trade with other empires. ^^

I am very glad to hear that there will be a reaction to bullying

But when you put it that way, what is the incentive of the empire generating more pressure to negotiate? I suppose they would be able to ask what they specifically want in normal deals?



It does sound interesting and is certainly worth a try.

C: Obviously the design of the demands will have to make the person demanding feel like their getting something useful, but I think the opposite is even worse. Demanding is always gaining something (war included), even if you didn't get exactly what you wanted, it will still hurt the person in question. Optimally we will be able to design each choice such that it will always give you something you will want (say dust) as well as other things that add flavor.

The thing is, the system is not supposed to know how you 'value' things. Its a rigid system that is predictable and is resolved through predictable actions. Demanding a system should only occur on the last threshold of demands, meaning that you would have to intentionally not demand anything before to get to that point, nor did you make any deals with the empire at all.

Oh I see, so the "value" of what you get from demands changes as the pressure applied becomes higher. That is interesting. So there wouldn't be a situation, in theory, where there are 3 unequal options whereby the victim would pick the worst / most useless concession. Ideally, at that point, all 3 options would be equally bad (and hopefully equally useful to the pressuring party).



As long as there is no "giving spice to Broken Lords" situation, I suppose it would be nice to get a random thing for cultivating pressure, especially if the aim is to hurt the other.

D: We weight this by how frustrating it is that a single war means one empire is eliminated (or at least brought to the point of not being able to compete). You appear to not be considering the costs of the force truce or the severity of what is given up. It is meant to be a last resort, not a 'free pass'.

It is hard to gauge the costs of force truce without info

I do hope that relying on force truce will be punishing and will require a lot of effort to bounce back from.



In theory, I don't mind wars not being made infinitely long or empires collapsing in a number of turns. I was just worried that forcing truce was a simple button you can press to save yourself, kind of like the Drakken force truce (which I don't mind that much, because it was a unique faction trait and is fitting of the lore).

This is interesting!

But it has a lot of issues of how you weight military power against economy or influence. How do you value an alliance? This sort of combining a bunch of values has a high chance of obfuscating the core rationale (end wars without elimination) and means that we're back to the same situation of the empire losing will lose economy/influence from losing systems and thus be eliminated in a single war.

Are you considering that the truce simply means that war has a highly increased cost on war declarations for 10 turns? That wars can be started again immediately, but at a high influence cost? Or even that ~10 turns of truce may not be as bad as you think?

I didn't actually consider that an empire can declare war immediately after being forced into a truce. I suppose that is a good way, then, to make sure that a megapower isn't being delayed unnecessarily by a tiny backwater faction. It would simply ignore the truce.



That does make it more acceptable, but I think there is room to make it more interesting by involving the galactic scene in some way, either before or during negotiations, to at least justify it on a narrative / immersion level. I am not sure how the weight of each empire would be calculated. It could be as simple as amount of influence, or perhaps even general score (which would be problematic with high difficult AI, because it's a dirty cheater).



The problem with 4x games is that diplomacy is, 99% of the time, bilateral. There are no multilateral negotiations and diplomacy. I understand its complexity and difficulty, but it would be nice to include the rest of the galaxy sometimes. The part about Alliances sounds quite great and I am eager for more.

A lot of players also genuinely dislike the entire 'more systems = lower income/approval/happiness'. The negative reinforcement of expanding is one of the most critized points in our games and in Civ. There are also a lot of people who are incredibly frustrated with the rebellion mechanic of spawning units of Civ5. I personally am fine with it, but there are very different players of 4X games out there.

From what I have seen, it is actually praised in Endless Games, how massive empires have a burgeoning cost to them. And I do think that it is a shame that there is no rebellion mechanic in Endless games. Regardless of that, the fact that expanding madly is not that optimal in Endless games is one of my favourite things about it to be honest. I hope ES2 will have that in large part, as well.



But of course, I recognize that not everyone appreciates such a system, and that this isn't the immediate point of diplomacy anyways. I brought the issue up because it was mentioned prior.



Don't mistake my slight scepticism for lack of enthusiasm though! I actually prefer that you are trying something new and innovative, and hopefully gradually refining it through patches / DLCs / expansions, than sticking with the same formula in 4x games that has been providing mediocre diplomacy for the most part.

Thinking about Diplomatic pressure and demands, and about what Sinnaj63 said in his first post: it has to seem a fair deal, what I propose is that having enough diplomatic pressure, you can:



- Force research agreements (benefits both players even if one doesn't wants it, maybe 'cause it's more advanced and don't want others to catch)



- Force economic/cooperation agreements (same reasoning as before).



- Force tech exchange (it will seem legit to other empires, even if you exchange a good tech for a s**t one everyone is accepting that each empire negotiated a fair deal)



- Force resource/dust exchange (same reason as before). In that case you can ask like a tribute, but instead of just ask and take, the opposing side is offered 2 or 3 choices as what to receive in exchange, mainly referred to marked price (not remember if you said there will be a market like EL, but still can make some hidden mechanic to this - Sorry, read again, GDD2 mentions there's Market). That's i.e.: the demanding side asks for 50 Titanim, then is forced to offer 500 dust (market 1 Titanium = 10 Dust) or 100 anti-matter (Market 1 Titaniun = 2 Antimatter).



There are also two assumptions:



- You can always avoid the demand by declaring a war, then all resets to War exhaustion mechanics.



- There are thresholds on Diplomatic Pressure referred to each demand type.



----



Also I liked the idea between all that thing, as Metalynx said:

The goal is that empires that generate less pressure will be looking for oppotunities to trade with the empires generating more to reset pressure.

In most 4X you can completely ignore diplomacy and still win (I did and never hide), and Aplitude seems to have a good idea how to make players at least not ignore it, even if it's only to keep the diplo pressure bar at 0 with meaningless trade. Will see how it works, but at least looks good.



----



Nothing to comment about war exhaustion. If I want a genocidal war, just assume it will take more turns, but after first or second war the loosing faction will probably be crushed to a point that doesn't represent a thread.

Oh, of course KnightofPhoenix, I completely understand your comments are so engaged and critical because you want the best from the game



For your point on what the one exerting pressure gains from making normal deals, is that he gets to specifically ask for what he wants/needs and he gets to use his pressure without being considered a bully in the eyes of everyone ^^

I also understand that you are lacking some information to talk about specific elements, such as the algorithms used in the systems. We're not including those in the GDD's because we want them to be readable without math/formulas and that those are the most likely thing to change ^^



lo_fabre: Some interesting ideas there I like the forcing agreements, though it does mean we need to create rules such that they cannot be broken for a number of turns. Will keep it in mind

To your assumptions -> Yes, one of the responses to demands is declaring war, although this is under the assumption that you can declare war ^^ (Say we if we had Roving Clans, they would be unable to declare war, unless we considered it a special case).

And the thresholds will increase the value/resources of demands.



The rationale of making Diplomacy mandatory (i.e. cannot be ignored) was at the core of designing pressure It was, however, important that the system incentivized using the normal deals - so I'm very curious to see you all get your hands on it and tell us if we succeeded

To your assumptions -> Yes, one of the responses to demands is declaring war, although this is under the assumption that you can declare war ^^ (Say we if we had Roving Clans, they would be unable to declare war, unless we considered it a special case).

And the thresholds will increase the value/resources of demands.

Interesting things there.

The rationale of making Diplomacy mandatory (i.e. cannot be ignored) was at the core of designing pressure

As said before, +1 to the idea.

I do wonder how all this interacts with the Cravers. Will the be completely unable to conduct Diplomacy, as in ES1, or will they only be unable to strike normal deals, but can still pressure others by declaring "Give us your stuff, or else" on them. Or would they use an entirely different system?

I'm thinking, since 'bullies' will be recognized as such when they pressure people, how about having a 'push over' badge for empires that fall victim to it often?



That way, powerful empires would want to negotiate normally in part to avoid the bully label while weaker empires would be encouraged to negotiate normally to save face.



The pressure mechanic is starting to grow on me, in theory, as long as there are negative repercussions in having it happen often (for both initiator and victim). I am also unsure about pressure being, essentially, based on influence. I suppose it reflects the size of an empire and the happiness of its population, but I hope there won't be a situation of a meager and weak empire being able to generate a ton of influence out of nowhere and thus put pressure on infinitely more powerful empires (though I suppose they can simply declare war).

Metalynx wrote:
Technically we 'could' have this. The issue is having victory conditions that change according to alliances could end up in situations where a person 'leaving an alliance' would win. Which means that if we were to add it in flexible alliances it would mean merging the alliance into a 'static entity that cannot be broken'. We do to some extent like the idea of alliances not being permanent to create dissent later in the game when players are getting closer to victories as well.

This is certainly not something that is off the table, but it is too early for us to say anything specific on this.

This is more or less the conclusion Drakostax and I reached while stamping out the Amoeba just last night. Though perhaps flexible alliances could have a totally different victory condition. We wound up thinking about a 'Galactic Council' sort of victory condition, where the Alliance would be the victory condition itself, riding on a large amount of factors. Not quite sure which factors, but it's food for thought, I guess.



Nevertheless, our hype is perpetual, and we can't wait to see how everything goes!



(P.S. Wouldn't mind seeing the more diplomatic races being less likely to be military juggernauts in ES2. Amoeba almost always beat even the Cravers in military strength in our games...)

Treaties and Missions





These two things are intersections of diplomacy with Trade and Quests.



Treaties



treaties are ways for both empires to share wealth for the common good.



Commercial treaties - provide certain buffs for dust collection and luxury resource gathering.

Science treaties - provide an overall buff to science output, or bundle resources to research one specific tech for both empires

Military treaties - provide bonus industry to military production, reduces upkeep



More?



Missions



Missions are another source of Quests.



They are, simply put, quests generated by one faction, with a specific bounty, plus an added relationship bonus. The reward can be only a large relationship bonus.



Each empire is limited in the number of simultaneous missions it can have active at any single time.



Missions can be targeted towards one specific empire or be open-ended, fulfillable by any empire.



Examples:



Put up a bounty of X dust for military units, or a cache of luxury resources (any faction)

Whomever kills X units of faction Y gets a prize.

Remove all Minor faction A support for player X (can be by militaristic or peaceful means)

Prevent faction M from taking over planet H for B turns.

Colonize Planet B before faction J or before turn T.



Missions can be pulled or pushed. In diplomacy, one empire can pledge to 'prove its worth'. It is a meta-mission asking for a mission from the other side.

The other side can ignore the mission request or fulfill it by setting up a reasonable target.



What constitutes a 'reasonable' target is up to balance: game stage, faction power, relationship intimacy level, game difficulty.



Missions would have a max. number of turns to be fulfilled. They generally would not carry penalties if they expire.



The intent is to have something more open than dealing 1-to-1 deals with immediate 'accept or deny' results.



All of the diplomatic system can be based on crafting missions.



Faction A proposes a peace treaty over to action B.



Faction B can immediately accept. Or...



On the other hand, it knows faction B is in attrition with faction C to take over a colony planet.



It can think about the deal for a few turns while it watches the outcome, make an offer to faction C while at that, and/or answer Faction B's request with a counteroffer. After a few turns it makes the deal it feels more advantageous.

OptionalSpring wrote:
I think there should be another side to the military tree. Expansion disapproval should stay as it is for the taking of neutral and other players outposts. What should be added is Conquest disapproval for the taking and loss of owned systems. Where you can mitigate this by researching and building an improvement that has a high upkeep and can only be built in systems that have 100% owner ship and has to be bought with dust on systems that don't have 100% ownership. So Team A take one of Team B's Systems, for team A to not gain any disapproval from this on their empire and the diplomatic community they would have to buy the "propaganda center" on the same turn they conquered the system. They could also buy it on subsequent turns but the disapproval keeps increasing until it is done, or the math flat lines. For Team B to not gain any disapproval from Team A taking their territory, would have to have a "propaganda center" built on the connecting systems so their empire's populous doesn't know about it.

That's really dumb gameplay wise though. You're losing systems which is bad and now you're also losing approval from that whihc is terrible.

I have been partial to the idea of player-generated missions/quests in strategy games for a while myself, but I don't think they would work well without special AI structures to support them, depending on what kinds of missions players can issue.



I'd certainly like to see more involved diplomacy with the pirates, though.

Metalynx wrote:
For shadow diplomacy, there can still be treaties such as 'Pay empire 1 to attack empire 2'. This is more a case of the treaties we make available.

A galactic congress is currently not planned, but its a cool idea were keeping in mind. Maybe for a DLC in the future.

Thank you for your answers!



I still have troubles to think we won't be able to, as an empire, provide Dust or influence points to a political faction of another empire (which will therefore gain votes, being able to convince more voters).

It could be awesome to see the Sophons funding the Pacifist party in a Craver empire to try the avoid a war (at least if this party win the elections).



I would really love to see more "unconventional" ways to interact with the other empires, for now the only option of shadow diplomacy you can propose is very weak and not very innovative. It's already in many 4X games including EL, and the concept of shadow diplomacy seems to me way more adapted to ES2 because we're talking about empires here, and not only races like in EL.

Well, after binging on Endless Legend and some other 4x games in the past few weeks, I have to say this: I am so incredibly glad about the announced Warscore mechanic for single player.

Yes, there is some concern about abuse in multiplayer.But in singleplayer against stubborn AI, it will be a godsend.

When the AI starts a war on you, gets crushed within a few turns, complains about wanting to end the war because of the needless bloodshed, but then makes demands off you for a truce until you have literally taken them down to a single city with 2 population and no army, while you control half the continent... Well, I would have killed for a way to end that war.

The war exhaustion/diplomatic pressure systems sounds good. One thing I didn't see spelled out but war exhaustion encourages you to pick the battles you really want to fight. For example, if close to war exhaustion, it might be better to have one big last battle to capture an developed world than to continue siege on some underdeveloped ones.



With regards to the Cravers, I hope your approach will be more like the Broken Lords and Food in Endless Legends than the Harmony and Dust in Endless space. The Broken Lords don't use food/regeneration, but can still grow population/heal by using Dust. The Harmony cannot use Dust but then get locked out of using the Heroes part of the game completely.

So for the Cravers I prefer they still use war exhaustion and diplomatic pressure, but they could interact with it differently. For example, if their war exhaustion increases against one empire, it decreases against all other empire they are at war with (relieved the Craver war focus is not on them) and/or decreases the diplomatic pressure against them (better not poke the bear)

This would encourage the Cravers to be at war and be better at fighting/sustaining multiple wars since if exhaustion raises to high in one war they can switch to another (they prefer to pick on the weaker prey).

Another thing could be, if they still deplete planets, that if most of their planets are depleted, the war exhaustion grows much slower or not at all (being desparate for new feeding grounds).

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
I'm thinking, since 'bullies' will be recognized as such when they pressure people, how about having a 'push over' badge for empires that fall victim to it often?



That way, powerful empires would want to negotiate normally in part to avoid the bully label while weaker empires would be encouraged to negotiate normally to save face.



The pressure mechanic is starting to grow on me, in theory, as long as there are negative repercussions in having it happen often (for both initiator and victim). I am also unsure about pressure being, essentially, based on influence. I suppose it reflects the size of an empire and the happiness of its population, but I hope there won't be a situation of a meager and weak empire being able to generate a ton of influence out of nowhere and thus put pressure on infinitely more powerful empires (though I suppose they can simply declare war).

A 'push over' badge could certainly happen sure ^^ Badge content is currently only an initial 'idea list' (because its primarily just XML content) -> so feel free to throw out ideas We plan for most of them to simply be 'modifiers' on diplomatic systems, such as pressure, war score and 'available diplomatic actions' (and AI accordingly to the systems).



As for small empires excerting pressure on larger ones -> Its not something we're completely against, as long as they fulfil the logical rules of the system. I.e. a sort of 'tall empire' that plays with a lot of peace, alliance and treaties that will increase their pressure generation.

But yes, the 'war option' is always there ^^

Hiyouren wrote:
(P.S. Wouldn't mind seeing the more diplomatic races being less likely to be military juggernauts in ES2. Amoeba almost always beat even the Cravers in military strength in our games...)

Simply due to the existance of the pressure/war exhaust systems, we can create more assymetry in terms of war strength. For example Amoeba could be weaker, but be able to do demands/force peaces on lower thresholds -> So they would have to 'win by a smaller margin'. We want all factions to have a slightly different feel in terms of Diplomacy.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
Bunch of interesting stuff! [/QUOTE]

The treaties you mention are good ideas We have plans to have more variety in effects of treaties and have more treaties that feel like they hurt you if they are broken.



Empire created missions is something we have internally discussed on several occasions. But there are issues with the AI (specifically abuse of AI). Also we're not sure its going to add that much. I can only really say we have internally discussed it and for now its not in the plan. But for future DLC's it could happen.



Regarding Minor factions / pirates I can only say that more interaction will be available than in ES1 and EL. But its a rather large topic, so I do not wish to go into too much detail here in the Diplomacy GDD as it would detract from the diplomatic systems as they are not directly linked.

SireTriste wrote:
I still have troubles to think we won't be able to, as an empire, provide Dust or influence points to a political faction of another empire (which will therefore gain votes, being able to convince more voters).

It could be awesome to see the Sophons funding the Pacifist party in a Craver empire to try the avoid a war (at least if this party win the elections).



I would really love to see more "unconventional" ways to interact with the other empires, for now the only option of shadow diplomacy you can propose is very weak and not very innovative. It's already in many 4X games including EL, and the concept of shadow diplomacy seems to me way more adapted to ES2 because we're talking about empires here, and not only races like in EL.

When we had discussion on effecting other empires elections and such, it was important that direct counterplay would exist. For example spending dust to skew the election of an opponent does not directly create counterplay unless they can pay dust to skew the elections in the same way -> but if you add that, players can always just buy elections to go their way. This conflicts with the base idea of the 'populations having an impact on your game'.

Note however, that your game actions will affect other players elections - the simplest example is that attacking a player will make the militarists and pacifists of that empire react ^^



As such, when we've had internal discussion on impacting the opposing sides elections, we wanted to do it through an espionage system -> which I cannot promise will end up being in the base game.



But yes, the options for shadow diplomacy I agree is not the strongest points of the diplomatic system - we decided to focus on the pressure/war exhaust systems firstly! But DLC maybe!

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Well, after binging on Endless Legend and some other 4x games in the past few weeks, I have to say this: I am so incredibly glad about the announced Warscore mechanic for single player.

Yes, there is some concern about abuse in multiplayer.But in singleplayer against stubborn AI, it will be a godsend.

When the AI starts a war on you, gets crushed within a few turns, complains about wanting to end the war because of the needless bloodshed, but then makes demands off you for a truce until you have literally taken them down to a single city with 2 population and no army, while you control half the continent... Well, I would have killed for a way to end that war.

Honestly I think this exact point is why Paradox AI gets a lot of praise. It doesn't entirely have to do with 'smart decisions' - it has to do with 'understanding the decisions'. And this system creates a very clear 'action/reaction' feedback, which is a large part of the rationale.

I'm glad you approve, now I hope the implementation lives up to your expectations!

Tussak wrote:
The war exhaustion/diplomatic pressure systems sounds good. One thing I didn't see spelled out but war exhaustion encourages you to pick the battles you really want to fight. For example, if close to war exhaustion, it might be better to have one big last battle to capture an developed world than to continue siege on some underdeveloped ones.



With regards to the Cravers, I hope your approach will be more like the Broken Lords and Food in Endless Legends than the Harmony and Dust in Endless space. The Broken Lords don't use food/regeneration, but can still grow population/heal by using Dust. The Harmony cannot use Dust but then get locked out of using the Heroes part of the game completely.

So for the Cravers I prefer they still use war exhaustion and diplomatic pressure, but they could interact with it differently. For example, if their war exhaustion increases against one empire, it decreases against all other empire they are at war with (relieved the Craver war focus is not on them) and/or decreases the diplomatic pressure against them (better not poke the bear)

This would encourage the Cravers to be at war and be better at fighting/sustaining multiple wars since if exhaustion raises to high in one war they can switch to another (they prefer to pick on the weaker prey).

Another thing could be, if they still deplete planets, that if most of their planets are depleted, the war exhaustion grows much slower or not at all (being desparate for new feeding grounds).

Your suggestion for Cravers regarding them still using diplomatic pressure and war exhaustion, but have a slightly different take on it, is exactly the plan

Cravers will also have the Eternal War trait (which means they cannot go above cold war state) but with a twist - it will only be active while they have the Militarists in their senate. So depending on playstyle you could potentially avoid this trait. While the trait is active, the pressure will be much more dangerous, because trading resources usually arrive with the peace state (subject to change)

We are likely to give all factions some sort of bonus/malus/twist on diplomacy